


i trust you

by bio_at



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Era, Gen, M/M, Oblivious Keith (Voltron), Pre-Kerberos Mission, i cant believe thats a tag, male pronouns for genderfluid Pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 03:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bio_at/pseuds/bio_at
Summary: five times shiro and keith were vocal about trusting each other, and the one time keith says something else.





	i trust you

**Author's Note:**

> who's tearing themselves apart waiting for s3? meee. i tried making this as vague as possible to be s3+ canon compliant but alas, it's hard to be compliant to a canon that hasn't been released yet.
> 
> inspired by [this pretty art](https://twitter.com/OVERWATan/status/886645986256224256) by [@OVERWATan](https://twitter.com/OVERWATan/) on twitter! i am weak for hyperfocused keith apparently

**1.**

“Yes, _yes_ , I trust you, Shiro.”

Shiro looks up from his battered copy of Silberberg, eyebrows raised. Keith hasn’t torn his eyes off his organic chemistry worksheet, his laser focus threatening to burn a hole through the sheet of paper into the desk.

For a heartbeat, the library feels especially silent. In reality nothing’s changed, from the gaggles of cadets clustered around tables, poring over homework just like Keith is, talking quietly with heads bowed together. Shiro thinks, idly, of the time when he’d sworn to Matt that getting Keith to give him the time of day, much less _trust him,_ would prelude hell freezing over, pigs flying, the whole shebang.

But Keith tosses out the statement so casually, so irritably, the verbal equivalent of swatting away a fly. Keith had asked him about how many valence electrons oxygen had—literally textbook knowledge, and combining the fact that Shiro had been holding a textbook and the fact that Keith cannot physically look away from a challenge, Shiro had answered. He had also sneaked a peek at the Lewis structure Keith was struggling with, and thrown in a few tips, which prompted the response.

That response, by the way, carries a weight for Shiro that it doesn't seem to hold for Keith. He'd spent the better part of a month trying to worm his way into Keith’s good graces, and even this tutoring session is only the fourth out of nine sessions that Keith attended. Of course, it could just mean that Keith trusted him with checking a periodic table for half a second and relaying the correct information. It’s a very small thing to be trusted for, Shiro’s aware, but after weeks of no indication of, well, anything, he’s willing to consider it a victory.

Shiro spins the pen he’s holding, turns back to his laptop with a frown, and says, “I know.”

After a moment, Keith puts his pen down and yawns, nonchalant. Shiro sighs.

 

**2.**

“You’ll keep out of trouble while I’m away, right? I trust you,” Shiro says, leaning against the doorframe to Keith’s dorm room, at 4 am on the day of the Kerberos launch. He dons his stern face, although it may be for nothing as Keith continues to tap at his tablet, writing a lab report that Shiro knows is due in six hours.

He waits patiently as the words sink through to Keith, and when he finally looks up from his tablet, his eyes are still glazed over. Keith blinks, and his smile reaches his eyes, just a little bit. He makes a small noise of disbelief and scoffs, “I know. Come on, Shiro, it's just two months. In fact, look at me, not getting into trouble right now, _doing my report_ —”

“Alright, alright,” Shiro says, grinning, pushing off from the doorframe. “Okay then, I’m running late. Stay safe, Keith.”

“Yes, _Dad_.” Keith rolls his eyes at him, exasperation and fondness in the gesture. Shiro smiles at him, one last time. The snideness in Keith’s face softens into something warmer, more gentle, and Shiro knows he’ll carry this memory with him through Kerberos. He turns and continues down the corridor, leaving the door open and earning a groan from Keith—he hated it when people left his door open. Shiro snickers to himself as he hears the sound of bare feet scuffling across flooring.

“Bring me back a space rock or something!” Keith’s voice echoes down the corridor, before a door clicks shut.

Shiro grins to himself, thinking of the weight limitations on spacecraft as he walks away.

 

**3.**

The first few hours after he crash lands back to Earth are a blur. He’s only half aware of Keith, his red jacket whipping in the arid desert wind, the thrumming of a hovercraft beneath them, as well as three or four other people on the hovercraft with them. He isn’t sure. He can barely keep alert.

Shiro jerks awake in a dim, unfamiliar room. His breathing sounds ragged in the night air, and the dim orange haze in his surroundings throws him off balance—Galra ships were always purple—

A feather-light touch on his shoulder, gentler than anything he’s experienced in a long time, but he can't help but jump at the feeling. “Shiro, it’s me,” a familiar voice says quietly. Shiro turns to see Keith, kneeling down next to him and looking worried; the thudding in his chest doesn’t stop. “You’re safe. I took you from the Garrison. What’s going on?”

_Galra. Matt, Sam—his arm—Voltron—_

“I have something to say to everyone when they wake up,” Shiro grits out, jerking his head at the three cadets strewn over Keith’s floor. “I—It might seem ridiculous at first, but we’ll need all the help we can get—”

Keith sighs. “I trust you, Shiro,” he says simply, and it cuts Shiro off. There’s something broken in Keith’s eyes, something Shiro never thought he would see in Keith. It’s the same brokenness that he feels festering inside him, the one he refuses to acknowledge for fear that it would consume him—

“I know,” Shiro says, interrupting his thoughts and attempting to smile. A shadow of a smirk appears on Keith’s face, and for a moment Shiro lets himself breathe.

 

**4.**

“Right then,” Coran says, tapping an unmarked button, pulling up a diagram for a maze in front of Shiro. “Don’t let Keith walk into a wall!”

Keith tsks, and looks up at him in the command tower. Even from this far Shiro can see his dark eyes, bright through his lashes. “I trust you, Shiro,” he says easily, laughter in his voice, like it was laughable that Shiro would ever let him walk into a wall.

Shiro smirks and replies, “I know you do,” right before he makes Keith walk into a wall. Keith flips him off.

They then proceed to clear the maze in record time.

“Ah, smashing records, just like old times,” Hunk says, mock-wistfully, from where he’s watching with a laughing Pidge and an indignant Lance. “It's just like our Garrison days.”

“You see that, Lance?” Keith calls from the sim floor, pulling off his helmet so Lance can properly see him smirk. “That’s how you trust your partner.”

“He made you walk into a wall!” Lance yells.

“Yeah, and we still set a record!”

Shiro knows he should stop them, but he only sighs and exchanges a look with Pidge as he lets the harmless argument wash over him.

 

**5.**

“We’re gonna get you out of here, Shiro, just hold on!”

 _Keith,_ Shiro thinks, knowing it’s not just a vision from Black Lion, what with Black itself roaring for him nearby. Its presence is a physical weight against him, but it’s far from unpleasant—it feels almost like a hug, albeit without tangible weight, warm and familiar around his being, as though determined to enclose him.

Shiro feels the final chunk of debris blocking his leg shift; he unsuccessfully stifles a groan, and he can practically feel Keith’s worry spike. “I’m gonna pick you up, okay?” Keith whispers, voice broken, as though afraid that speaking too loud would hurt Shiro more. “Then we’ll go to Black Lion, and then the Castle, okay?”

 _The Castle_. He’s been away for so long…

Through a blanket of heat, the throbbing in his Galra arm, coughing up blood, and both Black Lion and Keith’s worry thrumming in his temples, Shiro manages to murmur, “Okay. ...I trust you.”

Keith’s movements stutter very minutely. After a heartbeat, Keith picks him up in a fireman’s carry. He grips at Keith’s arm like it's a lifeline, the red accents in his Paladin armor catching his attention as his consciousness flickers.

“I know,” Keith murmurs quietly, carefully, as though afraid speaking too loud would blow him away. Shiro feels his grip tighten just a little bit, and takes that as his cue to faint.

 

**+1.**

“The nearest planet with dilithium ore is three jumps away,” Pidge says, pointing up at a blue dot in the control room’s star map, which swells and turns yellow for emphasis.

“We won’t _make_ it in three jumps,” Coran insists, for what feels like the second time in just as many minutes. “We have to make it in two or less!”

“Keith,” Allura says, impatience evident in her voice. “Please tell me you have something.”

Shiro glances at Keith, who’s lost in thought, staring intensely at a holo on Hunk’s panel. Shiro himself had never been one for long-distance course plotting; he specialized in intersystem piloting and navigation, which had been one of the major factors in being chosen as the Kerberos pilot. Keith, Shiro had come to discover, had apparently poured his time into studying intergalactic navigation in the time he had been the leader of Voltron. It doesn't take a genius to guess why he had done so, but it was something Shiro was… hesitant to think about.

Still, it did wonders for the team. Between Allura’s masterful control of the Castle’s navigational systems and functions and Keith’s knowledge of navigation and his natural affinity for understanding the encrypted data they’d hacked from Galra ships, they’ve become pretty damn efficient at getting around the universe in the time Shiro was gone.

Keith’s so into it that he doesn’t notice Lance peeking closely over his shoulder, from where he’s perched on the armrest. Shiro is about 70% sure that Keith can literally feel Lance breathing down his neck, but Keith doesn't budge.

“He’s doing the thing again,” Lance laughs, waving his hand behind Keith’s holo panel. “I swear, we gotta try exploding something while he’s like this, just to see if he’ll notice.”

“Ahh, leave him alone,” Pidge says, smirking from his own seat, with the air of a well-worn joke; one that Shiro’s unfamiliar with. He’s missed a lot more than he thought. Apparently sensing this, Pidge turns to him and explains, “He does his best work like this.”

A memory of a grumpy cadet worrying his lip over chemistry problems makes its way back to Shiro. “Yeah,” he says noncommittally.

“Okay, I got it,” Keith says, oblivious. He stands up from Hunk’s seat to gesture at the star map. “We’ll first jump right to the outskirts of this nebula—it’ll jam our navigational equipment but I can guide you through, Allura. We haven’t considered it but Pidge decoded just enough information about that quadrant from the Galra that we can probably make it through. Shiro, could you take a look at the map beforehand, double-check that I’m right? It’s intersystem stuff.”

“Sure,” Shiro says, caught off guard, stepping forward to look at Hunk’s panel, where Keith had left open the holo of the nebula map. Keith, eyes still trained on the star map, starts to trace paths for what looks like their second jump. “By ‘intersystem’ I think the Garrison meant the _solar_ system, but sure—”

Keith snorts, and Shiro knows that sound: it’s the noise of disbelief he makes every time Shiro makes the slightest indication of doubting himself. _That_ joke, he’s familiar with, and something settles in him; reminds him he’s where he belongs. It’s also always followed by the same words—

“You know I love you, Shiro.”

And so Shiro replies, reflexive: “I know.”

The control room goes dead silent, Lance cut off mid-yawn with a strangled choking noise. By some miracle, when all of their eyes swing to Keith, he flicks aside a window from the star map, shaking his head, apparently completely oblivious to what he’d just said.

Then, everyone’s eyes swivel onto Shiro, who’s stuck staring at Keith, still plotting their course to the dilithium planet with that same laser-sharp focus from what feels like an eternity ago. From the cadet whose trust had been professed offhandedly, in a library full of stressed teenagers—to the Red Paladin of Voltron, experienced enough for Allura to entrust him with tricky navigation scenarios. He’s come far.

And so have his feelings, apparently, Shiro thinks, fighting down a blush.

“Yeah, so from that nebula we’ll have enough to jump just within range of the dilithium planet,” Keith continues, and with a flick of his wrist he traces the path of the second jump with a dotted line. “We’ll have to use the ion thrusters to get into orbit, but that’s well within our capabilities, right, Coran? ...Coran?”

He finally turns back to the rest of the team. When he gets no response, he blinks, and the focus in his eyes sharpens into bewilderment, carefully scanning each of their faces in turn. “Uh, guys...?”

Hunk nudges Coran, the motion standing out like a sore thumb in the quiet control room. Shiro musters enough self control not to facepalm; out of the corner of his eye, he sees Allura give in and slap her hand to her forehead.

“Yes! Yes, you’re right, yes,” Coran stammers, in such an unconvincing display of lying that Keith crosses his arms. “The ion thrusters are good.”

“That’s settled, then,” Shiro says, a little too loudly, but he’s proud enough of the fact that his voice sounds otherwise normal. “Everyone should go get some rest. We’ll make the jump to the nebula early tomorrow, give me some time to check the maps.”

In return he receives five variations of the _are we really not going to address what just happened?_ look, in addition to a confused one from Keith. Avoiding that last one, he approximates his best death glare, until they give up on him and leave.

When everyone’s dispersed, Keith walks up to Shiro with a furrow in his brow and a pout on his face. Shiro braces himself.

“What’s with them?” Keith grumbles.

Shiro shrugs helplessly, not trusting himself to say words.

**Author's Note:**

> when shiro gets back to his room, lance, hunk, pidge, allura, and coran are stuffed into it, demanding answers
> 
> hmu @ [bio-at](http://bio-at.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


End file.
